4 July 2007
When will I learn? 4th of July = Parades
Posted by Brad Hefta-Gaub under: 4th of July Parades; Cycle; fixed gear; fixie.
Every year on fourth of July, I roll out of my driveway and forget that there’s a very high probability I’ll run into a Parade somewhere along my route. This year… was no exception! Don’t get me wrong… I understand the homespun pride of a small town parade… and I sort of even enjoy the idea of sitting and watching a parade with my kids… just not when it blocks my cycling route!
Today I decided to ride the Lake Washington Loop in a counter clockwise path. I’ve never ridden this course before in this direction. I’ve probably ridden around the lake 50 times, but always clockwise.
I only missed one turn, which is actually pretty much non-obvious in the counter-clockwise direction. And since I was speeding past some guy at the time, yeah… I felt a little silly having to double back and catch up to him. He of course greeted me with a “hah! missed the turn eh?”, Yeah, thanks buddy!
When I got to Kirkland, wouldn’t you know… Parade! And we’re not just talking one or two blocks, no this parade went winding along through the streets of Kirkland like a giant snake doubling back on itself. Picture some ancient celtic design of a knotted snake whose scales are actually high school marching bands, firetrucks, police cars, and I kid you not a miniature Shetland pony that was smaller than my cat! Apparently the city of Kirkland also has a tactical response unit truck that was the size of an 18 wheeler. Seriously, why would they need such a vehicle?
Anyway, I rode today’s 50 miler fixed. Along the path I chatted with a couple random cyclist who were riding about the same pace as me. One guy along the route was chatting me up about my bike, as he apparently has a Bianchi Pista (like Ironmed uses as his commuter bike) which he laments not having water bottle braze-ons.
As we were chatting I mentioned I was considering doing the STP on my fixie, and he strongly encouraged me to. It turns out that last year he did a two day STP on his fixie. So now, I’m not pretty much convinced I’m going to ride STP fixed. Phil and Jeff and Karl will probably all say something like “well, duh, we knew that was going to happen”.
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 07/04/2007
- Time: 11:00:00
- Total Time: 2:47:30.00
- Distance: 50.25 miles
- Average Speed: 18 mph
4 Comments so far...
karlmccracken Says:
Nice that you chose that posting to link to for me!
I’ve been thinking about the STP on a fixie tandem. And then I thought that you, Phil, and Jeff could all do it on a three seater. The trouble would be figuring out who sits where. Obviously for stability, Phil has to go in the middle, and it would make sense for Jeff to take the back seat, so he can balance his laptop on Phil’s back. That’d put you up front, in charge of steering the thing. The best bit about this arrangement is that you wouldn’t be able to tell if the other guys were pulling their weight, and could legitimately claim that you did the whole STP with two passengers . . .
Brad Hefta-Gaub Says:
Actually Karl… I’m sorry, that was a mistaken link… really… I meant to just link to your blog, but I guess the URL was in my “recent list” or something.
But… that’s an awesome looking bike you have there. I might have to take you up on it! You are planning on shipping it to me for the ride, right?
I am actually considering building a bike with my friend Dave. But we were thinking more like a chopper style cruiser bike. Ape hangers and everything. Something like this.
Maybe I should look into adding a couple extra seats?
karlmccracken Says:
Yep, I can just see you on the ‘Tour de Hell’!
The Trandem bike in the picture featured in the 1970’s comedy programme, “The Goodies”. They also invented the Walking Shoes, which were like normal shoes, but with something like pedal cranks to connect the left and right shoe. So you end up walking with a perfect pedaling motion. I seem to remember that these were also motorised, so if you see anyone wearing ‘em in a race, report it to a marshal!
John Rankin Says:
hey there… how goes it ? I caught sight of the Tucson marathon reference on the side of the blog page. Cool coincidence that I’m planning to do that one too. I’m going to make a long weekend of it with my girlfriend so maybe I’ll see you at that race.
